Colm Parkinson shares gym horror story about session with Jim McGuinness

A lesson to be learned.

Just because you've seen other lads do a few bicep curls in the gym before doesn't mean you're an expert. Just because you've been given a gym programme doesn't mean you're on the verge of becoming a beast. The gym has gone massive in the GAA in recent years. So much so, that if your team isn't in the middle of a pre-season Strength and Conditioning programme at the moment, you're lagging behind. Go back to the turn of the of the millennium and this gym culture was only beginning in the GAA. The early explorers had found weights but they were only coming to terms with bench presses and rows. Colm Parkinson remembers himself and his Laois teammates putting it to Mick O'Dwyer that they should have been doing gym work like the Armagh boys in the early 2000s. https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/951735794359767040 They were eager to get a programme for the team and a few collective sessions going. Micko fobbed them off.

"We asked him could we do weights, he said 'no you won't tell me what to do,'" recalled Wooly on Wednesday's GAA Hour.

Many managers around the country would have had the same outlook on this new phenomenon, but it was only a matter of time before players were blooded in the gym. Wooly had a memorable first experience.

"I remember down in Tralee in 1999, McGuinness was into the weights and he collected me one night to go up and do some weights with him up in the gym.

"So I said I'd do everything he was doing, these bicep curls and these bench-presses. Genuinely, the next day I couldn't straighten out my arms the next day.

"My muscles had never felt like this before. When I pushed my arm out straight, it bounced back up into the bicep curl position," said the Portlaoise man.

All greenhorns can learn from Parkinson's struggles.

"You need a coach, and you needed a manager to be on board with this as well," he said. "Strength and conditioning was at such an early stage, so would you have been doing the right things on your own? "You need a coach at that stage when you've never done it before.  "Even when Liam Kearns took over, we were completely raw and green about these weights, so to go away and do them on your own is counter-productive."

All it takes is an open mind. You can listen to the gas tale here from 15"00'. https://soundcloud.com/sportsjoe-gaa-hour/kieran-bergin-on-intercounty-life-micko-unfair-on-laois-players